Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
The album Angeldust and Blasphemy by Vilkates was 1998 heavy metal album limited to only 500 copies. The art used for this album was Gustave Doré’s illustration of Canto 18 of the Inferno, Devils and Seducers.
Find the album here.
Find Doré’s illustration here.
Contributed by Gianluca Giuseffi Grippa
The 1998 metal album, In the Valley of Tears, by the Ukrainian band Dawn of Winter uses Gustave Doré’s illustration, Paramours and Flatterers as its album art.
“Almost two hours’ worth of superbly crafted and passionately expressed doom metal from the German underground! No frills, no fads, no gimmicks, no asinine image! This is TRUE DOOM the way it’s meant to sound. A formula enduring in the hearts of real genre fans until the end of days.” – I HATE
Find the album here.
Find the illustration here.
Contributed by Gianluca Giuseffi Grippa.
“The title of the album, Freddie’s Inferno, is a reference to Dante’s Inferno, a poem written by Dante Alighieri in the 1300s which describes the journey through hell. The tracklist also mirrors the poem as each track is named after a circle of hell.” —Genius
Freddie Dredd’s songs in this album share the same names as many of the sins present in Dante’s Inferno.
“Comin’ from the underworldMy body holds a demonHeard you screamin’ for a breakI don’t think anyone could takeI’m a beast, I’m a foe, I’m the one you saw beforeDon’t be greedy with your life” –Freddie Dredd, “Greed”
Contributed by Nova Anastasia, Florida State University ’27
Deborah DeNicola’s poem “Desire with Mountain and Dante” was published in the collection Original Human in 2010. In a personal email communication, DeNicola recounts, “I am an east-coast person and I was in Seattle and Mt. Rainier was in the distance. I had not been in a relationship for several years and was aware of my own ‘desire without an object of desire,’ as Wallace Stevens puts it. I had been teaching The Inferno so Dante was on my mind.”
Original Human can be purchased at Amazon. Many thanks to the author for permission to reprint the poem.
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
